Want to make a setting that only has humans of different cultures

>The ideal is obviously a setting that manages pull off interesting unique cultures aswell as truly alien sentient species. I sadly know of no such setting.

The Ideal is for people like you obsessed with tropes to Literally hang yourself like the inbred fuck you are.

The Depth of a setting or a character has literally no baring on how "Alien" or "Unique" it is and is entirely expressed in it's presentation.

In short, Autistic people have no grounds to talk about things they literally cannot understand.

Instead your setting relied on DIFFERENT crutch fantasy tropes and used humans instead, and used another set of crutch fantasy tropes "The Fae" to cover your unimaginative asses.

Again, literally zero point in running a Human only setting.

Why does the idea of a human only setting anger you so much? I personally like the idea but I don't attack others who want else

Because nobody does it right, and everyone who argues in defense of it does it so badly they keep proving why nobody does it.

>Oh other races are just pointy eared humans

Then why limit them?

>Oh I want to make them Fae

What's the point in exchanging one cliche for another much less interesting cliche.

If you want a Human only setting, I think the two inbred manchildren in this thread didn't even argue for a Human only setting.

They argued for a setting with a lack of choice.

Please hijack this thread into advice for actually presenting different cultures during the course of the game.

I've been struggling with how to present it, and was considering coming up with a few simple Do's and Don'ts for when visiting each culture, just to give a very general idea.

>Nobody writes the way I want them to so they shouldn't be allowed to

Yes, exactly.

I expect them to be written well, and nobody does that.

OH mighty neckbeard, please tell us what the correct way to write is.

My best way of doing it I've found is to give them traditions and habits that are strange to the player. Stuff like making up specific greetings for diffierent cultures, different ways of standing, changing up social mores, stuff like that. You don't have to infodump a giant pile of cultural rules and regulations on the players, but have them notice stuff like "no one shakes hands, and get kind of freaked out when you do it" or "All the men are wearing hats".

Little cultural tidbits can go a long way to making a culture feel real.

Likewise, I like to play this whole thing up a lot more with nonhuman cultures, since their cultural differences are often going to be way more stark compared to humans. Stuff like lots of traditional orcish greetings seeming like straight up death threats, or elves having a separate system of counting time and as such explaining why they tend not to pay attention when someone talks in tiny increments like "months".

I can't because the trick is to write with depth.

All you want to do is write with width.

You can tell me all along how "Fae and spooky" the Elves are, but every time you do, it distances them from being living intractable things and more into walking plot devices.

I could write a story with the most generic intepretations of Dwarves and Elves, and it'll still be more interesting than your autistic attempts to add depth by adding a tiny inch after inch of pointless tropes.

user, you've either not been paying attention to what I've said or you're intentionally ignoring me to steer the conversation in the direction that you want. I told you I was fine with people using elves and dwarves, what I was wondering was why you were so vehemently against a human only setting. Neither of them are inherently superior to one another, it's just a different style is all.

>Says I ignored what he said
>Ignores what I say

Because nobody can do it right, so they should stop deluding themselves into thinking it works.

Go on. Do it right now. You tell me why you should do a Human only setting.

What is even the point of a fantasy setting if you don't have non-human races to mess with? You have other fantastical stuff running amok, but playable non-humans is somehow too much? Give me a break.

There's no point in humans only unless your story/game/theme exclusively tell a human story that would not work with other races.

Because the chief appeal of fantasy races is that they have a variety of different cultures but that you can apply these cultures exclusively to humans?
It's less that human only is better and more that it can be equivalent; and with human cultures you can either make use of existing cultural tropes as a shorthand to get players to understand, or avoid tropes associated with fantasy races your players might instinctively pick up on with that race (or that you yourself might fall into when writing them).

I mean, humans only as PC's could work, but that'd be very much in the vein of making a low fantasy kind of setting. A place where the fantastical elements are rare and awe-inspiring. It's definitely got its place, but people yelling about people playing fantastic races because "they're just humans with gimmicks" are people who need to realize that the only way you can get them to have strange, inhuman aspects is to MAKE them have strange inhuman aspects. Anthropomorphization is a thing, and people are really, really good at it. In a game where everyone is playing dogs, you're still going to come at it like a human unless you try otherwise, so if it's that big of an immersion-breaker for you, try harder.

>There is not a single instance of an RPG game where "Human only" is more fun.

Not saying I dislike having non human races, heck my favorite game abd setting is Agone, which has 12 nonhuman playable races, and only 1 of those is from standard playable fantasy fare (dwarves), but saying there is no instance is a bit facetious.

I mean, take SIFRP for example: it's the game if thrones rpg by green ronin, no nonhuman races, but plenty of fun and interesting story potential.
Sure, no humans can add a lot to a setting, but if the setting is built well and the GM is good at portraying the world, there's nothing wrong with a human only setting.

Except that's wrong, because Game of Thrones is literally boring tripe.

It's the little things that make up cultural traditions that give the sense of being somewhere else.
Having people greet each other in a different way, or being able to talk about something openly because it's not a faux-pax in that culture.
There's also the difference of where the values of the culture lie (which should come from the conditions that culture grew up in) but that's not really something you can "present" so much as something you should think of and the implications such values have on how people act and what kind of society they create, from it's entertainment to it's government.

> avoid tropes associated with fantasy races your players might instinctively pick up on with that race

So avoid potential hooks for any sort of storytelling depth, and just plod along with the surface level of autistic shit Human-only faggots produce.

No, because you can use different tropes.
Tropes aren't linked to fantasy races user. If I make a culture that's "Basically Romans" or "Basically the Mongols" you can do a lot of stuff with that, but make them Dwarves and people might be expecting more emphasis on their master craftsmanship, a love of alcohol, etc; not in that they expect them to adhere to this, but that they've already got the image of what makes Dwarves "Dwarves" in their minds and it might colour their perceptions.

There doesn't necessarily need to ahve any specific point to having a humans only setting. I mean, it's not like having only humans is making any kind of a big thematic statement. It's more of a case of there being no point in including non-human races if nothing interesting is being done with them, and interesting non-human shenanigans aren't needed in every setting or story. If non-human races are included, they should actually be non-human, not just humans with some quirks. If that's all you want, having different, clearly distinct human cultures is just an easier and cleaner way of doing things.

>There is not a single instance of an RPG game where "Human only" is more fun.
How would having playable non-humans make something like Pendragon more fun?

>Because you can use different tropes

Again, proving you're nothing but an autistic manchild unable to grasp anything beyond the entry level concept.

>Why would X race of Fae have an active interest in the realms workings etc etc.

Your first problem is playing Pendragon son.

elves were always there dude

Why include only Humans when that is not being explored well either?

Oh wait, you're just autistic.

It's almost like it actually matters

I think you guys are too hung up on it's just x, but with y. The point is looking different and having minor changes can be all that is needed. You're not writing a novel really, the point is for them to be able to be picked up and expanded on without having to have a giant wad of cliff notes and other junk weighing a player down and making the process more work than it is fun.

There doesn't need to be both male and female characters for all the difference they make, but we have them anyway because they are fun and potentially interesting.

This argument literally goes both ways because it is entirely fucking meaningless.

A culture of druidic humans who worship nature and live in harmony with the forest is pretty much the same as a culture of druidic elves who worship nature and live in harmony with the forest. The only difference is a couple of very minor details.

It literally doesn't matter. You might as well flip a coin or just go with your gut, and people who bitch about one or the other are retarded and probably autistic.

Which fundamentally brings me back to my entire argument.

Doing Humans only is pointless and is only done as an ego statement by some retard who gets angry at tropes.

You can take the most generic concepts of fantasy races and write them extremely in depth and well and they would be far more entertaining than merely swapping around the tropes.

What? How do accusations of autism even make sense here?

>Never in my time playing RPGS or on Veeky Forums has "Only human setting" Been a good choice.

How does it feel to hang with the uncreative bunch of disabled kids?

>Nope. You're wrong. If Fantasy races just being crutch human tropes already are indeed such a minor thing then you wouldn't be bothered to run a Human only campaigns other than your literal ego trips.
How the fuck does my ego enter in to it?
What are you even trying to say?

Reading comprehension, faggot.
Get some.

Concept of what?
You're the one that said avoiding fantasy races and the thing associated with them is avoiding storytelling depth, seems to me like you're the one without a fucking clue what he's on about.

Fucking hell. And here I thought the "you can only play a brown haired human fighter" faggots were supposed to be the autistic ones.

>Want to make a setting that only has humans of different cultures
See, there's your problem. You haven't actually made the thing yet. It's still all nebulous and mutable, and you're probably describing it to your players just vaguely enough that it leaves room for their own interpretations and ideas. Finish the thing, set it in stone, THEN present it to your players. Stop with the wishy washy bullshit.

>literally zero point in running a Human only setting.
How dim are you mate?
People aren't generally advocating a human only setting just because. They're advocating it because they see no point in adding extra sapient species when you're only going to use them to play dress up. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with having more than one species in a setting.

Well... If that is your opinion... I mean, you can lead a horse to water and all...

Surely you can not deny that it is at least a successful setting due to its popularity.

>They argued for a setting with a lack of choice.
This is how we know that you're a brainlet.

Well let me make my argument simple.

Human only settings are boring because you're actively trying to remove the effort of something.

this is why fundamentally all Human only games are shallow as fuck.

And despite how people claim to do it well, they don't because the logic behind the choice is there clear to begin with.

Try reading my argument some more inbred.

>Literally falls down to trying to meme away an argument.

Right, Because do tell me how Human Only creates more choice.

Go on.

>Popularity

Popularity has never factored in Quality ever. People who like Game of Thrones are examples of that.

>What is even the point of a fantasy setting if you don't have non-human races to mess with?
To tell/play a fantasy story.
You might aswell ask what's the point of a hospital show if you're not going to have George Clooney in it.

Non-humans that are basically just humans with long lives and long ears, or short, stocky, bearderd humans who like mining and smithing, or something similarly close to humans, don't add meaningful choices compared to having only humans.

If you're building the setting with the intent of "I want to exclude the knife-ears" then yes, it will be shallow, because you're not actually BUILDING anything.
If you make a setting and there's no reason to add non-human sapients so you don't, that's not removed any depth you may have.
Maybe you want to make a setting where the key theme is how people will find something to divide themselves by even in the face of uniting factors. Having it be all humans with only superficial differences demonstrates this theme more effectively than a setting with non-humans where the differences are very much not superficial.

Between the reddit spacing and the constant screeching of "REEE AUTISTIC! SCREE INBRED!" I genuinely can't tell if this is bait or if you're actually retarded.

>What is the point of a sci-fi setting without aliens

To confront the theory that we are in fact alone in the universe and what that might mean for us.

... Well, firstly, perhaps you can actually level some arguments against it instead of dismissing it out of hand. After all, it is one if the more famous human only settings, so perhaps if you want to demonstrate your point, deconstructing why you don't like it will help you.

Second, it is important to be able to distinguish between "successful" and "good" notice how I used the former, of which popularity is a good indicator.

Why should the majority have to kowtow to the whims of the minority? You're the only one that wants a human only game, so clearly you are the problem.

Because non-humans are gay

That's an excellent question that should be asked more in our everyday lives.

>He hasn’t read the DMG’s diatribe about how all non-human players are power-gaming assholes

For the sake of discussion: What do you good folk consider being "TOO human" for nonhumans? Obviously you don't want to fall into the oft mentioned trap of "skinny humans" "Short humans" and "Green humans", but at the same time you'd want your players to relate to them to some extent.

Is it enough to give them a distinctly nonhuman body type (Like a lamia or a centaur) while still remaining more or less "humanlike" in mindset, only with a distinct way of interacting with the world around them (and of course all the other implications their unique body type would have) Or is it more important to make sure that their culture and ways of thinking are much more distinct from humans?

For me everything's fine as long as they're not just immortal/extremely long lived humans with minimal differences and being made to excel at a single archetype. I swear that every fucking race in fantasy, save for humans and orcs lives for 500 years minimum.

I like to give them certain traits derived from their species. Using a really simple example of a lizardfolk, maybe give them penalties or sluggishness when cold, give them some weird mannerisms like twitchy/spring-like sudden movement. Maybe some other things that wouldn't be immediately obvious. Basically treat them like a foreigner with potentially serious allergies or social oddities and awkwardness, unusual customs, and other non-obvious, not entirely physical things that you have to outright ask them to find out about outside observation.

Imagine having a lizardfolk companion, a trap springs that causes severe cold, most of you shrug it off, but the lizard end up in a pretty bad state and the rest of the party ends up terrified of what to do to help them because they've never had to account for a lizardman before.

Is there anything that does this, that has humans go out into space to search for new life and civilisations and finds out we're just completely alone?
That sounds like a good premise for existential dread and some wonderful cabin fever for the crew of an exploration vessel.

>Because do tell me how Human Only creates more choice.
It creates the exact same amount of choice as a setting that uses species as dress up except that the former isn't relying on tired unecessary tropes.
If you want to have orcs and elves in your setting that's fine but don't act like they automatically make it better.

Star Wars is genuinely a good example of this, things like Twi'leks and Trandoshans and Wookies are all still "human" while looking pretty different. Even Hutts are still "human".
There's also things I don't use though, like Ithorians, because they're just a little too inhuman. It's a very blurry line, but I've found things in SW that are very close to it on both sides.

How many Elf PC's do you see in CoC?
How often do your players run Orcs in Paranoia?
Do Dwsrves have a stranglehold on the railway and mining industries in your Boot Hill campaign?
How many Goblins does it take to crew a T-72 in Twighlight 2000?
All human only settings...

> forced by his players to introduce faggot elves and retarded hobbits
OP, you are a bigger faggot than any elf ever could be and the biggest retard any hobbit ever could be.